Thursday, June 21, 2007

Cruising around

A reader asked about the latest rumor that Tom Cruise would like to buy the Galaxy.

Here's my response.

I doubt it has merit, for three main reasons.

1) The team that current owner Phil Anschutz was expected to keep, after divesting other AEG properties as part of the end of single-entity, was the Galaxy.

2) The Galaxy are worth a lot more than New York (better attendance, championships, stadium), and the purchase price for New York was reportedly 50 million two years ago. TC is worth a reported 250 million total, and he's investing some of that net worth in a venture to run United Artists. Anschutz is worth around 7 billion. I don't think TC has the money to buy a sports franchise for fun. AEG has no real reason to sell even a stake of the Galaxy to him.

3) Scientologists tend to gravitate to business deals where they have control. They buy property; they own publishing houses, etc. Under the shared entity of sports business, TC would have to work with all the other MLS owners, something I can't envision him really enjoying.

Anyway, it's still possible, but I do think it's unlikely.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm impressed with your scientology knowledge. Who knew?

A.C. said...

It's an LA thing. There are a lot of Scientologists around. They also pass out a lot of literature and are constantly offering people free IQ tests.